When making decisions, people consider the available information in order to make a rational and complete reasoning. However, this is not always the case as there are some factors that come into play and affect the rationality of people’s thinking process. The mistakes that occur in the thinking process are referred to as cognitive bias. Cognitive bias can be defined as a systematic error in the thought and decision-making processes resulting in a judgment that deviates from what would be regarded as appropriate in terms of accepted norms or logical thinking (Das and Teng 758). It occurs as a result of people holding onto their preferences and beliefs without the regard to other contrary information that may help in making a better decision.
Cognitive bias is a common way of thinking in human beings and forms an undesirable mental habit. Through the application of cognitive bias, the reasoning a person may adopt may be perceived as rational on the surface but it may hinder logical thinking (Greifeneder, Bless, and Fiedler 18). The thought process is complex at times as one needs to make judgments based on limited information. Furthermore, individual instincts, past experiences, and emotions affect the reasoning and hence a person cannot be completely rational. However, there are standards that help people to think logically such as avoiding emotions from interfering with reasoning. Cognitive biases, which are mental habits, prevent people from achieving rationality. This paper discusses three cognitive biases that apply in different situations.
Cognitive Bias that Applies to Me
As noted above, it is difficult for one to be completely rational when making decisions. This is because each person’s thought process is prone to interference from the cognitive biases. A cognitive bias that applies well to me is availability heuristic. Availability heuristic refers to the tendency of prioritizing or overestimating the significance of the information that is available (Haselton, Nettle, and Murray 11). With this kind of bias, people make decisions based on the information that they consider important even when they have not conducted a systematic study to verify the validity of the information. In this regard, a person ignores all the other information that could be proven and reason with a single piece of information that seems convincing.
In many cases, this form of cognitive bias is evident through the use of examples that offer perfect support and conviction for the decision-making process. Cognitive bias is apparent as I tend to think that air travel is not safe. This has made me develop flight phobia as I think a plane can easily crash and all the passengers on board die. I have supported my reasoning by examples such as the plane crashes during September 11, 2001, where aircrafts were hijacked and crashed. I, therefore, do not feel safe while traveling by aircraft. This bias can be adjusted or prevented by conducting further research or consulting before deciding. This will allow one to make a judgment based on the correct and sufficient information.
Cognitive Bias that Applies to My Friends
A cognitive bias that applies well to my friends is the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect is the habit of adopting beliefs and tendencies similar to those of people around without questioning them (Das and Teng 759). It also assumes that other people, who are usually many, have made the right decision and therefore adopt their way of reasoning. The reasoning, in this case, is affected by the unified aspect of the entire group. When people think as a group, the possibility of considering alternative views is overridden as all the members strive for unanimity. This results in the absence of independent thinking. This type of bias is apparent in my friends’ behavior in choosing a restaurant. In a town, there may be many restaurants and coffee shops. However, when deciding on which they would place their order, they chose the one with many customers inside. This gives a notion that the quality of products and services in that business are high. In this case, the decision is made based on the opinion of other people. Just because other people have decided to take their meals at a particular hotel, my friends join them. Here, independent reasoning is ignored. The best approach for preventing bandwagon effect from turning into a problem is by listening to the independent judgment of each person. The opinion of every member of the group would prevent the bandwagon effect in deciding.
Cognitive Bias that Applies to Media
Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias that applies to media. Confirmation bias refers to the tendency of people to consider only the information that confirms the preconceptions they hold (Haselton et al. 740). With this kind of bias, individuals search for news that confirms their preexisting hypotheses. For this reason, people affected by this bias would only find, interpret, and favor the evidence that supports what they already believe. In this regard, people tend to ignore evidence that would offer contradictory information. This type of bias is apparent in the newspaper media. Newspapers and other printed media offer informative news to the audience. This information could be printed or presented on the internet. Through the application of confirmation bias, users’ search for news articles is subjected to filters. This enables the readers to get what is regarded as relevant news. By filtering the news, the newspapers provide information that would be agreeable to the readers. News articles that could offer contradictory or opposing views are not shown. This may lead to the spread of fake news as people would stop looking for further evidence the moment their prejudices are confirmed by the biased newspaper articles. Therefore, the use of filtering in newspaper presents a perfect example of confirmation bias. This kind of bias can be prevented by looking at the alternatives before making a conclusion. Comparing information from opposing points of view may help in making a rational decision.
In conclusion, analyzing these biases has enhanced my understanding of cognitive biases by increasing the knowledge of how different types of biases affect human judgment. It presents a systematic pattern of reasoning that leads to irrational inferences. Cognitive bias is a mental habit that affects the way people make rational decisions. Due to cognitive biases, a human being reasoning is prone to bias and cannot be regarded as a rational or logical process. The biases make the judgment deviate from the rational reasoning. Therefore, every human is prone to biased thinking. Analyzing these biases has enhanced my understanding of cognitive biases by increasing the knowledge of how different kinds of biases affect human judgment.
Works Cited
Das, T. K., and Bing‐Sheng Teng. "Cognitive Biases and Strategic Decision Processes: An Integrative Perspective." Journal of Management Studies, vol. 36, no. 6, 2009, pp. 757-778.
Greifeneder, Rainer, Herbert Bless, and Klaus Fiedler. Social Cognition: How Individuals Construct Social Reality. Psychology Press, 2017.
Haselton, Martie G., Daniel Nettle, and Damian R. Murray. "The Evolution of Cognitive Bias." The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, 2015, pp. 1-20.
Haselton, Martie G., et al. "Adaptive Rationality: An Evolutionary Perspective on Cognitive Bias." Social Cognition, vol. 27, no. 5, 2009, pp. 733-763.
